I wrote the latest Notes on Progress piece on the recent approval of Journavx. While researching, I encountered this interesting interview with Vertex Pharma CSO where he says that when moving from academia to industry, he was “surprised to discover there were so many companies that had projects not really focused on [causal] human biology and many hammers looking for nails.”
He also believes that “there’s [no] widget or technology, whether it be the Human Genome Project, or AI, or structure-based drug design, or whatever you want to name, that transforms everything.”
This isn’t my area of expertise, so I found these statements interesting since they contradict a bit with mainstream or even technoptimist narratives. Any thoughts/agreement/disagreement, or do you know of any specific examples that align or contradict? I’d love to research & write more on this topic.
Hi Saloni!
I wrote the latest Notes on Progress piece on the recent approval of Journavx. While researching, I encountered this interesting interview with Vertex Pharma CSO where he says that when moving from academia to industry, he was “surprised to discover there were so many companies that had projects not really focused on [causal] human biology and many hammers looking for nails.”
He also believes that “there’s [no] widget or technology, whether it be the Human Genome Project, or AI, or structure-based drug design, or whatever you want to name, that transforms everything.”
This isn’t my area of expertise, so I found these statements interesting since they contradict a bit with mainstream or even technoptimist narratives. Any thoughts/agreement/disagreement, or do you know of any specific examples that align or contradict? I’d love to research & write more on this topic.